Transhumanism and you

[Flatfrog]

But how is that different from the you of two seconds ago? The only thing that makes a continuity of you-ness is memory: you remember being in your own body a few seconds ago so you feel like the same person. If you and I were to swap brains, it's the brains that would remain the same people, not the bodies.

It's different in the way a complete copy of my computer is different.

And it's the physical brains that make the person you.

Says a person through the medium of a computer screen! As far as anyone else is concerned, it's your personality that makes you you, not your brain.

When I die, I will still not be seeing out of the eyes of my copy so there is a distinct separation between us. My consciousness will end and will not continue. A new identical one will, but mine is dead. Useless to me to have a copy since what I want is to prolong my ability to experience the world.

And if there were an exact copy of you, *it would feel exactly the same way*. After all, who is this 'I' of which you speak, who 'sees through the eyes' of your head? It's a collection of personality traits, memories and emotional responses which happens to be moving round in a physical body.

And yes, that doesn't make death any easier. After all, as soon as we make another copy, we become separate people again (neither of whom has any claim to be more 'the original' than the other, of course) and each one of them fears death in just the same way. On the other hand, knowing that most of your memories live on elsewhere makes some difference. Frankly, I feel that way about death now in the more regular sense - yes, my mother is dead, but there is still a low-resolution copy of her personality kicking around in my brain and the brains of others she knew and loved, just as there are copies of her genes in my cells and fragments of her material body in her ashes. And when I dream of her, to some extent a small part of her lives again in that low-resolution emulation.

 

[Mangod]

Deus Ex: Human Revolution centralizes the the debate surrounding Transhuman augmentation.

"Would you" it asks "supplement your body with machinery?" "What do you mean, 'would I?' I already wear spectacles, and a wristwatch, and I always carry a phone which I'm currently in the process of ducttaping to the side of my head."

Anyone who talks about technological development being "unnatural" deserves to be abandoned in the wilderness wearing nothing but a figleaf!
- Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw.

 

[Neurodisiac]

So first, if presented Option 1 (grow old [if you're lucky], endure myriad physiological/mental failings, then suffer the utter annihilation of your consciousness) or Option 2 (augment your body/mind and/or transfer your consciousness to a new "brain" that does not age, wither, perish, etc., spend exponentially more time with people you want to spend exponentially more time with, experience moments [either directly or indirectly] such as interstellar travel, possible First Contact with an alien civilization, full-blown VR, galactic colonization, etc., and ultimately not #($&#*(@ dying), I'm going for Option 2 'til Option 1 is forced upon me.

I am a total layman, but it seems at some point within the next decade we are going to treat patients who have brain damage, birth defects, and disorders with engineered tissue, synthetic implants, nanotherapy, etc. How long before we're replacing a damaged/defective visual cortex with a perfectly functioning replica? 10 years? 15? 20?

Progressing, it's going to get tricky when we get to memory storage and recall, and all the goodies of the prefrontal cortex. I don't know how long it's going to take, but it seems inevitable that we unravel all this jazz. I read an article a few years ago regarding accessing one's mind via machine, copying memories, recording dreams, and eventually uploading/transferring one's consciousness (not COPYING it, mind you), and the researcher stated that, positing you, your mind, is a brain-state, that all of these things will be possible. If you have a memory of your first kiss and are recalling it right now while reading this sentence, the data that is that memory is not only physically stored in your mind, but physically "recalled" as well. If this is true, then it stands to reason that it can be manipulated. This would apply to the rest of the brain and all of its functions (providing, still, that we are on a materialistic view of consciousness).

Perhaps consciousness is some sort of sparked ether, but most scientists and researchers doubt this. If it is really, as Antonio Damasio brilliantly put, "a feeling of what happens," then our civilization is going to make one hell of a leap this century.

 

[AgedGrunt]

Anyone who talks about technological development being "unnatural" deserves to be abandoned in the wilderness wearing nothing but a figleaf!
- Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw.

There is a massive difference between developing technology to assist and benefit humankind and integrating (changing) the human body with it beyond its natural ability.

Imagine someone greeting you while taking video, facial recognition and perhaps even recording everything you say, completely integrated in their body and invisible to the naked eye. Is that the same as holding a phone in hand? People are already freaking out over Google Glass.

Do people like cameras on every street corner? How about walking and talking to them everywhere you go? We're a far cry away from the iron age, locomotives and microwave ovens. It's time to stop pretending like this is no different.

 

[UniversalRonin]

My view on it, is as long as I get to decide when to delete my mind without needing the approval of a committee, I'm down. I could live out all my fantasies in VR (The ones I was either too poor, or in a real world, and thus unable to do) and then switch myself off.

The one thing that I immediately think about with this though: Holy f.....g s..tstorm of a database. And the queries would be great and terrible.

EDIT-This is on an 'after my natural lifespan has ended' basis. I live out my life, mind upload, live out my fantasies, die.

 

[DudeistBelieve]

What is even the point of uploading your brain to a computer?

Well, you can...um...why not?

Generally the idea is that you put your mind in it after your original body dies, but that sounds more like making a computer copy of you. You still get to be dead.

This. And I really wouldn't feel too comfortable dying knowing a copy of my being still exists. I don't even think I'd be okay with augmenting my body.... maybe with like a mechanical heart or something so I can't die, but it seems risky to me. Can't even go online without some sort of computer virus bug catching on, can you imagine the pandemic we would have?